The Queen has become the world’s latest social media influencer, after making her debut on photo-sharing platform Instagram.

During a recent visit to the Science Museum, Queen Elizabeth II posted a photograph to the Royal Family’s Instagram account, much to the delight of her subjects. She was browsing round the museum’s summer exhibition, which is entitled ‘Top Secret’.

The British monarch used an iPad to upload to the social site, and shared an image of a letter from the Royal Archives. The director of the museum, who was showing her round the exhibition described the event as “a nerve-wracking moment.” Her post can be seen below:

At the time of writing, the post had amassed over 235,000 likes and over 4,300 comments. The Royal Family account (@theroyalfamily) has follower base of 4.8 million. The post tagged the Science Museum in the photo, but Her Majesty thought best not to use any hashtags on this occasion.

Some Instagram users could not contain their excitement and delight that the Queen had uploaded to the social media site. Many of the comments left on the post reflect this.

As Britain’s longest reigning monarch, the Queen is not unfamiliar with technology and is usually up-to-date with the latest technological changes. Her Coronation was a signal of this, as it was the first to be filmed when television cameras were given permission to record inside Westminster Abbey in 1953. This prompted over half a million televisions to be sold in the lead-up to the historic event.

Her reign has also seen the introduction of colour televisions, the internet, and mobile phones. In 1976, during a visit to an army base, she sent an email when the technology was still being developed and in its infancy, making her the first monarch to do so.

This is not the first time that the Queen has used social media. Back in 2007, her grandchildren, Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice, explained and demonstrated the concept of video sharing site YouTube to her, which resulted in her later launching her own YouTube channel.

One year later, Her majesty personally uploaded a video to YouTube when she was visiting Google’s London offices. Following this, in 2014, the Queen became active on microblogging site Twitter*, tweeting for the first time during another visit to the Science Museum, where she was opening an exhibition.

It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R.

Drawing from a broad pool of experience that ranges from university studies in English Language to his work as a medical receptionist in a busy GP practice, Alan fits right at home as Engage Web’s Account Executive.